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'Liberty above all things' — Francis Hirst (1940)1

Jaime Reynolds describes the career of the leading ideologue of'old Liberalism' in the interwar Liberal Party, Francis Wrigley Hirst.

Fbr H.J. Laski, Francis Hirst was the 'last of the Liberals'.2 And Hirst was indeed a rare and unbending exponent

and publicist of classical Liberal­ism in the first half of the twenti­eth century, at a time when such ideas were being overwhelmed

time. Moreover those ideas have, to some degree, come back into fashion in recent decades among neo-liberals and libertarians.

Francis Wrigley Hirst was born on 10 June 1873 at Dalton Lodge near Huddersfield. Both his parents came from wealthy mill-owning families with deep

by war and collectivism. He can be seen as the last in the line upholding the pure doctrine of what he called the 'great watch­words of Liberalism — Peace, Lib­erty, Free Trade, Public Economy, and Goodwill among Nations'3

in the tradition of Adam Smith, Cobden, Gladstone and John Morley. Today he is a largely for­gotten figure, remembered only as an outmoded'primitive Liberal' on the fringes of the party, whose laissez-faire creed had been top­pled by the new social Liberalism in the years before 1914 and bur­ied by Keynes and Beveridge in the 1930s and 1940s.4

Nevertheless Hirst's career is of continuing interest. More than anyone else he continued robusdy to articulate and propagate tradi­tional Radicalism from within the Liberal Party until the end of the 1940s. While his brand of Liberalism was in dechne, it was still a significant element in the thinking of many Liberals at the

nonconformist and Liberal roots. His maternal aunt, Mary Wri­gley, married William Willans (1800—63), the leading figure in Huddersfield Liberalism and nonconformity and grandfather of Herbert Asquith. AnotherWri-gley started the US chewing gum firm. Hirst's father Alfred was forced to retire from the woollen textile business in 1886 because of failing eyesight and the fam­ily moved to Harrogate, where he worked in the cause of the blind. This does not seem to have involved much hardship. Hirst later recalled that shordy before retiring his father had cleared a profit of/¡10,000 (the equivalent of ,£500,000 today) from just one import deal.5

Hirst attended Clifton Col­lege in Bristol from 1888—91 and then won a scholarship to Wad-ham College, Oxford, securing a double first in Classical Modera­tions and Greats in 1896. He was President of the Oxford Union

22 Journal of Uberal History 47 Summer 2005

HE LIBERALS • 1М ШШЯ ШШ ШШ LILL ШШЧ0

1

IRST (1873 1953) the same year, succeeding John Simon, who was to become a life-long friend.6 Other friends at Oxford included Hilaire Belloc, F. E. Smith and Leo Amery.

Hirst was one of the first at Oxford to study political economy, naturally of the clas-

influenced by Alfred Marshall and Professor F.Y. Edgeworth (1845—1926), a vigorous oppo­nent of tariff reform.7 Hirst was already an ardent Liberal, joining the radical Russell Club.

Having narrowly failed to secure a research scholarship at Oxford, Hirst earned his living coaching students, lecturing on local government at the newly founded London School of Eco­nomics, and writing. In 1899 he was called to the Bar and prac­tised as a barrister for the next few years, without much finan­cial reward, giving up in about 1906 to concentrate on journal­ism and writing. He had cut his teeth as a journalist as one of the talented young writers that C. P. Scott brought into the Manchester Guardian. In 1907, largely on the recommendation of John Morley, Hirst was appointed editor of The Economist, a post he was to hold until 1916.8

Hirst had forged his close friendship and political partner­ship with Morley in the sum­mer of 1899, and again in 1901, when he worked as Morley's researcher on his celebrated biography of Gladstone, spend­ing many happy weeks exploring

at Hawarden Castle.9 Hirst soon became Morley's intellectual and political amanuensis.10 Together with several other young Lib­erals, including Hilaire Belloc, John Simon and J. L. Hammond, Hirst published Essays in Liberal­ism in 1900, contributing an essay on Liberalism and Wealth. The book - which aimed to reassert the doctrines of classical liberal­ism then under increasing attack from Fabians and New Liber­als - was dedicated to Morley as the 'embodiment of philosophic liberalism ... the wellspring of a liberal tradition which united the doctrines of Mill and Cobden and represented the still-living personality of Gladstone'." Hirst was suspicious of the New Liber­als — what he called 'the new type of Liberal politician who offers the public a mixed pottage of socialism and jingoism ...'.,2

At this time Hirst was closely involved in the protest movement against the Boer War in which

Hirst was a rare and unbending

and pub­licist of classical liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century, at a time when such ideas were being over­whelmed by war and collectiv­ism.

Modey was a leading figure. Hirst was a founder of the League of Liberals Against Aggression and Militarism, serving on its com­mittee.13 He contributed to a col­lection of essays on Liberalism and the Empire (1900), accusing Cecil Rhodes's Chartered Company

Boers.14 He also worked with Simon, Belloc, G. K. Chester­ton and J. L. Hammond in the pro-Boer Speaker, the forerun­ner of The Nation, which under the editorship of H.W. Massing-ham became a standard-bearer of advanced Liberal opinion.15

In 1903 Hirst married Helena Cobden, great-niece of Richard Cobden, and eventually they were to live in Cobden's old home, Dunford House near Midhurst in Sussex, which they turned into a shrine to the great free trader and his ideas. The marriage was long-lasting and happy, although they were at odds over Helena's suffragette activity, which led to her arrest in i9i3.l6They had no children.

Already, in his twenties, through his friendship with Mor­ley and his prominence in Lib­eral circles and at the Union at Oxford, he had built up a wide acquaintanceship with many of the leading politicians of the day,

Journal of Liberal History 47 Summer 2005 23

THE LAST OF THE LIBERALS'

helped by the fact that he was excellent company, 'hospitable and inclusive', and 'a fascinating conversationalist' with a 'gen­ius for friendship'. He had many interests outside politics: he was a spirited but not particularly good chess player, a keen fly-fisherman and sports enthusiast (cricket, golf, athletics), and a lover of the Clas­sics, especially Latin poetry ,'7

His first two solo books appeared at the height of Joseph Chamberlain's Tariff Reform campaign. Free Trade and other Fundamental Doctrines of the Man­chester School, a collection of extracts from the leading classical liberal pioneers which was pub­lished in 1903, and Adam Smith, which appeared in Morley's 'Eng­lish Men of Letters' series in 1904, set the pattern of clear and ortho­dox exposition of classical liberal thought. Hirst was in the thick of the Liberal defence of free trade, contributing to Fact versus Fiction (1904), which the Cobden Club published to refute Chamber­lain's arguments.18 He abo wrote a number of academic and tech­nical studies on local government

Top:The six writers of Oxford Essays In Liberalism (1897) - standing: H. Belloc, J. L Hammond, F. W Hirst; seated: R J. Macdonnell, J. A. Simon, J. S. Philllmore.

Left: Hirst's farewell party given by the staff following his sacking as editor of The Economist In 1916 -he is seated with Mary Agnes Hamilton, later a Labour MR

and legal and commercial issues in these years.

As editor, Hirst expanded and modernised The Economist, previously a rather dull journal, turning it into a lively and par­tisan leader of Radical opinion. Working hand-in-hand with the anti-militarist wing of the Liberal Party, he sought to counteract 'the Armour-plate press' which loudly demanded a naval arms race with Germany. A good illustration of how Hirst operated behind the scenes came in March 1912 when Churchill proposed an increase in the naval estimates to build new Dreadnoughts, in defiance of the 'Radicals and Economists' and a strongly worded resolu­tion recently adopted by the National Liberal Federation (NLF). Morley leaked to Hirst information about the division of opinion in the Cabinet on this issue, including the opposition of Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Hirst helped Sir John Brunner, chairman of the

24 Journal of Liberal History 47 Summer 2005

'THE LAST OF THE LIBERALS'

NLF, to draft circular letters of protest to constituency associa­tions and editors, and in July he suggested that Brunner write to Asquith to say that he would call a special meeting of the NLF to discuss 'this fatal and provoca­tive policy'. In the autumn Hirst ghosted a manifesto from Brun­ner to every Liberal Association chairman before the NLF meet­ing held on 2i November. By the time the meeting was held, the Cabinet had found a compromise formula and the crisis had sub­sided, although the eventual out­come was a defeat for Hirst and the Economists.19

Hirst is sometimes described as an isolationist, but it would be more accurate to say that he stood for active efforts to maintain international peace in Gladsto-nian style through the 'Concert of Europe'. He attempted to lower international tensions by send­ing the journalist Dudley Ward to Berlin as a correspondent with a wide brief to promote friendly relations with Germany.20 He also upheld the Gladstonian tra-dition of concern for oppression-

Hirst is sometimes described

a Į _

tionist, but it would be more accurate to say that he stood for active efforts to maintain interna­tional peace in Gladsto­nian style

in Europe. In 1913—14 Hirst was a member of the International Commission established by the Carnegie Endowment for Inter­national Peace, which investi­gated Serbian atrocities against the Macedonian (Bulgarian) population during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13.The report was published in 1914.21

Hirst blamed the Liberal gov­ernment for the slide to war in 1914. He later wrote that 'the death of Campbell-Bannerman made way for Mr Asquith and so gave the Liberal Imperialists a free hand in foreign policy and at the same time opened the door to a great expansion of arma­ments ... The real reason behind these tremendous additions to the Navy lay concealed in the secret diplomacy of the Lib­eral Imperialist Ministers ,..'22

When war broke out in August 1914 Hirst, alongside his friends Morley and John Burns, who resigned from the Cabinet, was in the small group of Radicals

through the 'Con­cert of Europe'.

who opposed the war even after the German invasion of neutral Belgium. He immediately began efforts to build a broad alliance of the various anti-war currents.23

tion government under Asquith in May 1915 gready increased the pressure to introduce conscrip­tion, which Hirst loudly opposed. He wrote to Sir John Brun­ner that 'the Liberal Imperialists and Tory imperialists together are quite capable of working up a panic and rushing the coun­try into mih tary slavery'.24 The Economist immediately stepped up the campaign against com­pulsory military service, which it continued stubbornly in 1916 when Asquith brought in con­scription.25

Hirst's opposition to the war was, to a significant degree, budg­etary. He later wrote of'the Great War, the most tremendous eco­nomic catastrophe recorded in history',26 setting out his case in several of his books.27 He never wavered in his orthodox Cob-denite critique of war, writing in 1947 lhal twcrworld wars had

charlatan, so to speak'.31 None of this prevented Hirst from enjoy­ing a wide circle of friends from both the Conservative and Labour Parties.

Hirst suc­cessfully stirred up opposition in the House of Lords to a provi­sion of the Defence of the Realm Act, then being rushed through Parliament, which would have allowed a secret court martial to sentence non-military personnel to death.32 In 1915 Hirst took on the government in the outstand­ing civil liberties case of the war, the Zadig case. Arthur Zadig, though born of German parents, had been a naturalised British subject for ten years. In Octo­ber 1915 he was detained by the Home Secretary under the Defence of the Realm regula­tions on the grounds of his 'hos­tile origin and associations'. A defence fund was established and the case taken through the courts up to the House of Lords where Hirst appeared for the appellant arguing that the rights of British subjects under the Magna Carta

left Britain 'shorn of its liber­ties, in a state of bankruptcy and serfdom, oppressed by ruinous taxation, overwhelming debt, and conscription, manacled by more and more inflation, entangled in new alliances ... and with mili­tary commitments in all parts of the world.'28 He was secretary of a committee of economists critical of Lloyd George's finance policy formed under the Economic Sec­tion of the British Association.29

Unlike the many anti-war Lib­erals who gravitated towards the Labour Party, Hirst, on account of his economic liberalism, utterly rejected socialism. He told his good friend, Molly Hamilton, later a Labour MP, that 'anyone who has any truck with Socialism must be intellectually flabby'.30

Nor was the Conservative Party an option, not least because of its protectionism which, in Hirst's book, was equally if not more detestable. It was said that if a Tory entered the room, Hirst 'was able to detect it, "to smell out" the

and the Habeas Corpus Act could not be overthrown with­out express legislation. Although the Law Lords found against Zadig (with a powerful dissent­ing opinion from the Radical Lord Shaw), Hirst was widely judged to have won the moral argument and Zadig was released shortly afterwards.33

Hirst's outspoken opposition to the war cost him the editorship of The Economist in 1916 when Walter Wilson Greg, the most important trustee, lost patience with having to defend the paper's pacifist stance. Hirst's removal was handled in 'a highly civilised fash­ion'.34 For some time before his resignation he had been discuss­ing with Sir Hugh Bell, the great ironmaster and fervent libertarian, and with anti-war Radical MPs such as Gordon Harvey, Percy Molteno, Richard Holt, D. M. Mason and Godfrey Collins, the establishment of a new weekly, Common Sense, with Hirst as edi­tor. This 'fanatically free trade'

Journal of Liberal History 47 Summer 2005 25

'THE LAST OF THE LIBERALS'

paper appeared in October 1916 and survived until early 1921.

Consistent with his belief in exploring every avenue that might end the war, Hirst rushed to the support of the former Con-servativc Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, when he called for a negotiated peace with Germany in November 1917. Hirst was seen as the leader of'a party of sorts' that tried to exploit Lansdowne's initiative', forming a 'Lansdowne League' to arouse public support. The Common Sense office became a pacifist headquarters.35

Hirst fought a rearguard action against creeping wartime protectionism. With his usual allies — Bell, Harvey, Molteno, Holt and Collins, joined by Sir John Simon, John Burns, Leif Jones and Lords Beauchamp, Bryce, Courtney and Eversley -he protested in July 1916 against the protectionist resolutions put forward by the government for the Economic Conference of the Allies held in Paris.36 Com­mon Sense carried on the fight in 1919—21 against protection­ist measures put forward by the Lloyd George Coalition. Hirst and his collaborators formed an 'Anti-Embargo League' which forced the government to aban­don sweeping restrictions placed on imports, but had less success against 'anti-dumping' measures later.37

Hirst unsuccessfully stood for parliament in Sudbury in January 1910, defending a seat captured by the Liberals in 1906. He claimed that he was 'destroyed [by] ... Beer & Feudalism & sheer bru­tality', although in fact the swing to the Conservatives there (6.7%) was closely in line with the aver­age swing in Suffolk (7%). He also stood for Shipley,Yorkshire in the 1929 general election. Shipley was a three-way marginal with the Liberals in third place with about 30%. Hirst's vote was disappoint­ing, despite - or perhaps because of — his treating the voters to a 'masterly interpretation of the philosophy of Cobden and Glad­stone'. Against the national trend, his vote dipped by 3% compared

He had very little enthusiasm for Asquith and even less for Lloyd George; Campbell Bannerman was the last Lib­eral leader who Hirst counted as a sound Cobdenite.

with both the 1924 general elec­tion and a by-election in 1930 that was contested by a new can­didate. 38

In the 1920s and '30s he was increasingly out of tune with the

arty leadership. He had very lit­tle enthusiasm for Asquith and even less for Lloyd George39; Campbell Bannerman was the last Liberal leader who Hirst counted as a sound Cobdenite.40

Hirst was prominent in a number of organisations on the fringes of the party that sought to keep the flag of classical liberalism fly­ing. He was an executive mem­ber of the Free Trade Union and remained very active in the Cob­den Club, writing pamphlets and serving as its secretary from 1935. He also chaired the Liberal Free Trade Committee from 1931.41

In addition, Hirst was the moving force behind the 'Public Econ­omy League', a group formed in 1919—20 to press for reductions in public expenditure. The League was still active during the Second World War when Hirst lobbied the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, to curb the growth of expenditure and tackle rising inflation.42

Hirst remained an orthodox Cobdenite in international affairs during the 1930s, favouring the solving of problems through international law and arbitra­tion rather than through collec­tive security and the League of Nations. Such was his opposi­tion to war that he joined Her­bert Samuel and a handful of other Liberals in supporting the Munich agreement in 1938. He was not, however, a pacifist and accepted that the defence of free­dom justified the use of force both at home and abroad against its enemies (threatening Com­munist and Fascist parties in par­ticular).43

Hirst's influence behind the scenes is difficult to assess. He seems to have had easy access to leading politicians in all three parties throughout his career. In December 1905 we find him writing to Campbell-Banner-man as he formed his Liberal

government, urging the case for retrenchment to reverse 'the vast sums destroyed and wasted dur­ing the last ten years, and the results; borrowed credit, less enterprise in business and manu-factures, reduced home demand and therefore output to meet it, reductions in wages, increase in pauperism and unemployment.'44

Eighteen years later, as Ram­say MacDonald formed the first Labour government, according to gossip Hirst again had the ear of an incoming Prime Minister. The journalist R.T. Sang wrote to Josiah Wedgwood, a Liberal MP who had defected to Labour;

You have all been wondering who[m] JRMļacDonald] has been relying on - if anyone - for advice on the formation of his Government. No one has hit upon the fact which has been carefully concealed. But he had gone to the worst possible source for advice and inspiration -F.W. Hirst. Last week JRM, Hirst—and Lloyd George breakfasted together and went through the Cabi­net proposals. JRM offered Hirst the Chancellorship and pressed him to take it. Hirst refused in JRM's own interest, as he believed the Party would not stand the exclusion of [Philip] Snow-den, and it was Hirst who advised Snowden for it. Hirst has got [Lord] Par-moor to come in and influ­enced some other strange selections.45

It is unclear what truth if any there is in this report. The choice of Hirst and Lloyd George, ideolog­ical opposites within the Liberal Party, for such soundings seems odd, especially as Hirst held no office in the party. MacDonald's supposed offer of the Excheq­uer to Hirst seems even more improbable, as Philip Snowden, as the Labour Party's acknowledged financial expert, had an indisput­able claim to this position and

26 Journal of Uberal History 47 Summer 2005

'THE LAST OF THE LIBERALS'

Hirst was not even a Member of Parliament. Hirst and MacDonald were old comrades from the anti­war movement and had known each other since Hirst's university days (Hirst was also a close friend

individual freedom from Classi­cal Antiquity through the British and American liberal thinkers of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and defends its superiority—over the then

of Mollie Hamilton, who was liv­ing with MacDonald at the time). It is also true that MacDonald made some unexpected ministe­rial appointments of Liberal and Conservative personalities and there is a good deal of mystery about how he made his choice, but it was Lord Haldane, the most prominent of these, who seems to have been the key influence. The appointment of Lord Parmoor, an in-law of the Webbs and one of Labour's few supporters in the Lords, did not require prompting by Hirst. In all probability Hirst expressed his ideas for appoint­ments to MacDonald, but the influence Sang ascribed to him seems gready exaggerated.46

Hirst's influence as a journal­ist and writer was more definite. He continued to write prolifi-cally in the inter-war period. He liked to dictate straight on to the

send articles to press almost with­out correction.47 In the 1920s his annual analysis of the budget in Contemporary Review was widely respected. In 1925, A History of Free Trade from Adam Smith to Philip Snowden, which ran into several editions, appeared. This was followed by biographi­cal studies of great Liberals on both sides of the Adantic: a Life of Thomas Jefferson (1926) and The Early Life and Letters of John Mor­ley (1927), followed in 1931 by Gladstone as Financier and Econo­mist. Several of his works, includ­ing those on Smith, Morley and Gladstone, have still not been entirely superseded in the litera­ture. His The Consequences of the War to Great Britain (1934) inter­preted recent British history and politics from a Cobdenite Liberal point of view.48

In 1935 Hirst published two books that summarised his politi­cal and economic outlook. The weighty and ambitious Liberty and Tyranny traces the history of

ascendant ideologies of Nazism, Fascism and Communism, which Hirst inclines to lump together in many of their collectivist charac­teristics. Its shorter companion volume, Economic Freedom and Private Property, sets out the case for economic liberty and is fluent and pithy and much more acces­sible to the modem reader.

Hirst has been characterised by some contemporaries and later commentators as a 'laissez-faire Liberal', although he hotly rejected the term, at least if it was understood as meaning that 'gov­ernment should abstain inertly from constructive work'.49 He certainly favoured a limited role for the public sector and strict economy in public expenditure, furiously attacking the growth of the state especially during war­time when, he claimed 'the Brit­ish nation found out the meaning of bureaucracy,~3ndiearnt the dif-ference between being served and being ruled by a Civil Service.'50

Hirst considered that the State should be responsible for defence and police, provision of public goods, and education. He also accepted the need for municipal services: public health, lighting, roads etc. In general, however, the state should only take responsi­bility for services 'plainly ben­eficial to society which cannot be left to private enterprise'. As G. P. Gooch wrote of him, Hirst 'remained a "Manchester" man to the end, much less convinced than myself of the capacity of leg­islation to increase our happiness and welfare by State action and social reforms to create the Wel­fare State ... he was a Cobden­ite ...'5I Nevertheless, following Adam Smith, Hirst claimed that he 'had no pedantic objection to the state managing a business ifit can manage it well'. He also wrote positively of the progress in education, public health, old age pensions, and other public serv­

Hirst has been char­acterised by some contempo­raries and later com­mentators as a 'lais-sez-faire

ices in the years before 1914. He sought to distance his ideas from ideological laissez-faire of the sort advocated by Herbert Spencer, or for that matter by some modern libertarians. He rejected the idea that civilisation could be built on the basis of narrow individualism, and called for active participation of the citizen in the management of local and national affairs and public spiritedness.52 He wanted to return to what he called 'the long reign of economic liberty' between 1846 and 1914 when, as he pointed out, both Liberal and Conservative governments pro­moted social reforms involving large expenditure.

Sound money occupied a central place in Hirst's economic thinking; indeed it was something of an obsession. He was a fervent advocate of the Gold Standard and preferred a metallic gold and silver currency of the sort that existed in Britain from the early nineteenth century until 1914 to the fully convertible paper cur­rency linked to gold that was established by Churchill in 1925

Liberal', although he hotly refected the term, at least if it was understood as meaning that 'gov­ernment should abstain inertly from con­structive work'.

and survived until 1931. Äs he never tired of repeating, 'experi­ence has proved that sooner or later an inconvertible paper cur­rency with no intrinsic value comes to grief ... a moment always comes when the tempta­tion to inflate is irresistible ... it [is] madness for any nation which has the choice to allow its cur­rency to become the plaything of politics ... A currency must be knave-proof and fool-proof.'53

Hirst gave his memoirs (which closed before the First World War) the title 'In the Golden Days' and he was in no doubt that the rot in British politics, soci­ety and the economy set in with the abandonment of the Gold Standard in 1914. He wrote that the old metallic currency 'was as nearly automatic and perfect as any country need desire. The Great War dissolved it. Had we remained neutral ... there is no reason for supposing that the sys­tem would have broken down.'54

However he accepted that the decision to abandon the Gold

Journal of Liberal History 47 Summer 2005 27

'THE LAST OF THE LIBERALS'

Hirst, though an indiffer-

Standard again in 1931 was justi­fied at the time, while hoping for its restoration and putting for­ward ideas for international man­agement of the price of gold.

The contrast between liber- • .

'old LiberaHsm' was demonstrated by his involvement with Ernest Benn's Individualist Movement. Benn had founded the move­ment in 1926 while still a Lib­eral, but had broken finally with the party in 1929. Hirst seems to have been closely involved from the start, as was his old friend Sir Hugh BeU, who was a co-founder. Hirst helped to write The Philosophy of Individualism: A Bibliography, published by Benn's Individualist Bookshop in 1927. The movement took on a new lease of life with the national mobilisation and planning of the Second World War. Hirst pub­lished a pamphlet on Free Markets or Monopoly? in 1941 and helped to draft the Manifesto of British Liberty issued in mid-1942, of which he was a signatory. He was a leading figure in the Society of Individualists established by Benn

ism, mosdy written by Thatcher-ite Conservatives, tend either to ignore or dismiss the influence of the old Radical Liberal current.56

In fact there were important con­tinuities, which included Hirst's

even more outspoken.62 He was also increasingly doubtful about the welfare state in his later years and critical of what he called 'the Beveridge Hoax'.63 For their part, some Keynesians were suspicious

in November 1942, and his pro­tégé, Deryck Abel, became sec­retary of the Society. Hirst seems to have favoured a broad national membership (80-100 members in each constituency), while oth­ers wanted to keep it as an ehte Establishment lobby. In 1944 a rift between Hirst and Benn opened up. Hirst wanted the Society to lead a civil liberties campaign against the internment of politi­cal opponents of the war under Regulation 18b of the Defence of the Realm Act, but Benn, an instinctive 'patriot' on such mat­ters, refused to get involved. In September 1944, Benn agreed to amalgamate the Society with the National League for Free­dom, which claimed some forty Conservative MPs and a number of industrialists amongst its mem­bership. Hirst, with a few Liberal followers, resigned, protesting that this 'signified reaction, protection, mercantilism and monopoly'.55

Accounts of the post-war renaissance of economic liberal­

cian, was undoubt­edly the leading ideologue of indi­vidualist Liberalism in the first four dec­ades of the twentieth century, a viewpoint that saw economic liberalism, civil liber­ties, peace and inter­national­ism as an indivisible whole.

activity.The origins of the revival can be traced to 'Le Colloque Walter Lippmann', a gathering of economic liberal academics held in Paris in August 1938 to analyse and find ways to reverse the dechne of liberal thinking in Europe.The meeting was inspired by The Good Society by the American publicist, Walter Lipp-mann, pubHshed in 193 7." Hirst did not attend the meeting, but Lippmann prominently acknowl­edged his debt to Hirst's Liberty and Tyranny in his book.58 Hirst propagated classical liberalism among the younger generation of economists through his writ­ing and lectures, for example at the London School of Econom­ics (of which he was a governor) in the late 1930s, where Lionel Robbins and Friedrich von Hayek gathered a group of anti-Keynesian academics and stu-dents who formed the vanguard.

of Hirst's continued influence on Liberal economic thinking.64

He dated the opening of the rift between 'the old and the new Liberals'to 1935, but he remained an active and popular mem­ber of the party until the final years of the war, and was regu­larly elected by the Assembly to the Party Council.65 The break seems to have come at the end of 1944 when the Liberal Free Trade Committee was forced out of Liberal Headquarters, and car­ried on its campaign against Bev­eridge's influence over the party independently from Dunford House.66

For many years Hirst had also spread the word on the other side of the Atlantic. He was very well known in US economic liberal circles. His first visit there had been in 1907 to advise Senator Aldrich's Monetary Commission,

of the neo-liberal revival after the war.59 Hirst and some of the post­war neo-liberals certainly must have known each other through involvement in such bodies such as the Free Trade Union60. In the late 1930s and '40s he organised conferences for undergraduates at Dunford House to introduce them to a traditional Liberal per­spective on current events. He sought to popularise such ideas through his short book Principles of Prosperity (1944), but with its somewhat antiquated flavour it received nothing like the atten­tion of Hayek's Road to Serfdom, published the same year.

Hirst was, naturally, strongly opposed to the interventionist economics of Maynard Keynes, which were increasingly influ­ential in the Liberal Party in the inter-war period and after 1945, and this contributed to his disil­lusionment with the party.61 He frequendy attacked Keynes's ideas in his books and in private his denunciations of Keynes were

of the Federal Reserve Bank.67 In 1921 he lectured on economics at Stanford University in Cali­fornia.68 In 193s, on his last visit to the US, he lectured at Wes-leyan University and delivered the prestigious Princeton Public Lecture on The Value of Liberty. President Herbert Hoover was a close friend.69

Despite increasing ill health from about 1949, Hirst continued to take a lively interest in politics until shortly before his death, on 22 February 1953.

Hirst, though an indifferent politician, was undoubtedly the leading ideologue of individualist LiberaHsm in the first four dec­ades of the twentieth century, a viewpoint that saw economic Hb-eralism, civil Hberties, peace and internationalism as an indivis­ible whole. He was unashamedly backward looking and nostalgic: for him,Victorian Liberal England truly represented the golden days. He insistently restated Cobdenite and Gladstonian principles and

28 Journal of Liberal History 47 Summer 2005

sought to show how their aban­donment lay behind the troubles of his day. However he failed to develop a modern and persuasive expression of these ideas to match Keynes, Beveridge and other

p. 122. There is an entry for Hirst in the Dictionary of National Biography writ­ten by Roger Fulford (1971), but he is not included in The Dictionary of

Liberal Biography (1998). Some friends of Hirst's including Gilbert Murray,

'THE LAST OF THE LIBERALS' have been lost. Most histories of the Liberal Party and Liberal ideas ignore or dismiss Hirst, although there is greater interest among libertarians; see, for instance Mark Brady, Against the

Tide:The Life of Francis W. Hirst (www. Lbertyhaven.com, 1999).Hirst's papers

social liberal thinkers on the left, or to pre-empt the neo-liberalism of Hayek and the New Right. By the time of his death his brand of LiberaHsm was almost extinct. In that sense he can indeed be seen as 'the last of the Liberals'.

Dr Jaime Reynolds is guest-editor of this special issue. He studied at LSE and has written extensively on British and East European political history.

ï Inscription by Hirst to the Bishop of London in author's copy of F.W. Hirst, Liberty and Tyranny (London, 1935).

2 G. P. Gooch et al., F.W Hirst By His

Friends (London, 1958), p. 90. 3 F .W. Hirst (ed.), Alexander Gordon Cum­

mins Harvey: a Memoir (London. 1925),

G. P. Gooch, Roger Fulford, Maurice Bowra, Arthur Ransome, and Herbert Hoover produced a short volume of recollections in his memory entitled F.W. Hirst By His Friends in 1958.A few of his books were reissued in the 1960s and '70s, but Liberty and Tyr­anny and Economic Freedom and Private

Property have long been out of print and are now difficult to obtain. W. H. Greenleaf devoted considerable atten­tion to Hirst in his book The British

Ideological Heritage (London, 1983) pp, 97—100. Anthony Howe, Free Trade and

Liberal England 1846—1946 (Oxford, 1997) ако gives Hirst some promi­nence (p. 282). Howe cites Hirst's diary, but this refers only to limited extracts included in Hirst's privately published pamphlet The Formation, History, and

Aims of the Liberal Free Trade Commit­

tee 1931—1946; the diary itself appears to

Francis Wrigley Hirst 1873-1953: Selected writings Hirst et al., Essays in Liberalism by Six Oxford Men (London, Cassell, 1897)

Hirst et al., Liberalism and the Empire, Three Essays (London. Brimlev Johnson. 1900)

15

16

^together witfiľthose oFJohn Morley) were acquired by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in 2000. Hirst's memoirs, In

the Golden Days (London 1947) only go up to 1906.

Hirst, Golden Days, pp. 54—55,58.

J. Simon, Retrospect (London, 1952), p. 34· Hirst, Golden Days, p. 134-5.

Gooch, Friends, p. 62. For Hirst's edi­torship of The Ecotiomist, see R. Dud­ley Edwards, The Pursuit of Reason

— The Economist 1843—1991 (London, 1993)· Hirst, Golden Days, p. 162; Hirst, Early Life and Letters of John Morley (London, 1927) introduction. However there is only one brief men­tion of Hirst in Morley's Recollections

(London, 1917). Ibid.,pp. 160-61.

Hirst, Gordon Harvey, p. vii. Hirst, Golden Days, pp. 193,199. Hirst, Golden Days, pp. 183—5. This view is not shared by modern histo­rians, see I. R. Smith, The Origins of the

South African War 1899—1902 (London, 1995)· Hirst, Golden Days, p. 192; Simon, Ret­

rospect, p. 45. M. A. Hamilton, Remembering My

Joseph Redlich and F W. Hirst, The History of Local Government in England (London, Macmillan, 1903, reprinted until 1970s)

Free Trade and other Fundamental Doctrines of the Manchester School (London and New York, Harper & Brothers, 1903, reprinted 1968)

Adam Smith (English Men of Letters series, London, Macmillan, 1904)

Arbiter in Council (London, Macmillan, 1906 anonymous)

The Stock Exchange: A short study of investment and speculation (London, H. Holt, 1911; 2nd ed. London, Thornton Butterworth, 1932)

The Political Economy of War (London, J. M. Dent, 1915)

From Adam Smith to Philip Snowden: A History of Free Trade in Great Britain (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1925)

Hirst (ed.), Alexander Gordon Cummins Harvey: a memoir (London, Richard Cobden-Sanderson, 1925)

Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson (London, Macmillan, 1925)

Hirst and J. E. Allen, British War Budgets (Oxford University Press, 1926)

Early Life and Letters of John Morley (London, Macmillan, 1927; reprinted 1975)

Gladstone as Financier & Economist (London, Ernest Benn, 1931)

Money: Gold, Silver and Paper (London, Scribner's, 1933)

The Consequences of the Warto Great Britain (Oxford University Press, 1934)

Liberty and Tyranny (London, Duckworth & Co, 1935)

Economic Freedom and Private Property (London, Duckworth, 1935)

Armaments: the Race and the Crisis (London, Cobden-Sanderson, 1937)

Principles of Prosperity (London, Hollis and Carter, 1944)

In the Golden Days (London, Frederick Muller, 1947)

Good Friends (London, 1944), p. 82.

17 Gooch, Friends, chapters by J. E. Allen (Hirst's brother-in-law) and Arthur Ransome (an angling partner), pp. 13,

48-57· 18 Hirst, Golden Days, p. 248.

19 S. Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political

Press in Britain, vol. 2 (London, 1984), pp. 211—12. S. Koss, Asquith (London, 1976),pp. 149-50·

20 S. Koss, Rise and Fall, p. 211.

21 Unfinished Peace, Report of the Interna­

tional Commission on the Balkans, 1996.

Carnegie Endowment for Interna­tional Peace, Washington. See also www.macedoniainfo.com/macedo­nia/ foreword.htm.

22 Hirst, Harvey, pp. 71,75. 23 C. Hazlehurst, Politicians at War (Lon­

don, 1971), p. 125 citing letter from Hirst to C. P. Trevelyan, 12 August i9i4,Trevelyan MSS..

24 C. Hazlehurst Politicians at War, p. 270.

25 Hirst, Harvey, pp. 109,114—15. See also Dudley Edwards, Pursuit of Reason, pp. 561-67.

26 F.W. Hirst, Money: Gold, Silver and

Paper(London, I933)>P· 167· 27 Notably The Political Economy of War

(London, 1915). 28 Hirst, Golden Days, p. 202.

29 Gooch, Friends, p. 17. 30 Hamilton, Remembering, p. 80.

concluded on page 35

Journal of Uberal History 47 Summer 2005 29

ERRATA 'The last of the Liberals' - Francis Wrigley Hirst

' some of tunateiy some 01 tne~erra omitted in error. Our apologies to our readers and to the articles author. We reprint below the full set of endnotes for ease of reference

30 Hamilton, Remembering, p. 80.

31 Gooch, Friends, p. 49. 32 Hirst, The Consequences of the í Var

to Great Britain (London, 1934),

p. 108-9. 33 Gooch, Friends, pp. 91—94; and

Hirst, Liberty and Tyranny, pp.

48 Beveridge and Keynes were among his fellow editors of this series of histories.

49 Hamilton. Remembering, p. 80;

See W. H. Greenleaf, The British Politicai Tradition volume >: The

Ideological Heritage (1983), pp.

1 Inscription by Hirst to the 7

Bishop of London in author's 8 copy of F.W. Hirst, Liberty and

Tyranny (London, 1935).

2 G. P. Gooch et al., F. W. Hirst By

His Friends (London, 1958), p. yo. 3 F.W. Hirst (ed.), Alexander Gordon y

Cummins Harvey: a Memoir (Lon­don. 1925), p. 122.

4 There is an entry for Hirst in the 10

Dictionary of National Biography

written by Roger Fulford (1971), but he is not included in The Die- 11 tionary of Liberal Biography ( 1998). 12

Some friends of Hirst s includ- 13

ing Gilbert Murray, G. P. Gooch, 14 Roger Fujford, Maurice Bowra, Arthur Ransome, and Her­bert Hoover produced a short volume of recollections in his memory entitled F. IV Hirst By 15 His Friends in 1958. A few of his books were reissued in the 1960s 16

artd--70&rbut Liberty and Tyranny and Economic Freedom and Private

Property have long been out of print and are now difficult to obtain. W. H. GreenJeaf devoted considerable attention to Hirst in his book The British Ideological

Heritage (London, 1983) pp, 97-100. Anthony Howe, Free Trade

and Liberal England ¡846-1946

(Oxford, 1997) also gives Hirst some prominence (p. 282). Howe cites Hirsts diary, but this refers only to limited extracts included in Hirsts privately published pamphlet The Formation, History and Aims of the Liberal Free Trade

Committee 1931-1946; the diary itself appears to have been lost. Most histories of the Liberal Party and Liberal ideas ignore or dismiss Hirst, although there is greater interest among libertar­ians; see, for instance Mark Brady, Against theTide:The Life of Francis

W Hirst (www.libertyhaven.com, 1999). Hirst's papers (together with those ofjohn Morley) were 25

acquired by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in 2000. Hirst's mem­oirs, In the Golden Days (London 26

1947) only go up to 1906.

5 Hirst, Golden Days, pp. 54—55, 27

58. 6 J. Simon, Retrospect (London, 28

1952),p. 34. 29

Hirst, Golden Days, p. 134-5.

Gooch, Friends, p. 62. For Hirst's editorship of The Economist, see R. Dudley Edwards, The Pur-snit of Reason - The Economist ι$43-1993 (London, 1993). Hirst, Golden Days, p. 162; Hirst, Early Life and Letters ofjohn Mor­

ley (London, 1927) introduction. However there is only one brief mention of Hirst in Morley's Recollections (London, 1917).

Ibid., pp. 160-61.

Hirst, Gordon Harvey, p. vii. Hirst, Golden Days, pp. 193, ¡99. Hirst, Golden Days, pp. 183-5. This view is not shared by mod­ern historians, see I. R. Smith, The Origins of the South African

War ¡899-1902 (London, 1995).

Hirst, Golden Days, p. 192; Simon, Retrospect, p. 45.

M. A. Hamilton, Remembering My

Good FrieiuU-{London, 194.1), ρ

17

19

24

34 Dudley Edwards, Pursuit of Rea­

son, p. 541—42.

35 Hirst, Harvey, p. 129; Hamilton, Remembering, p. 85.

36 Hirst, Harvey, pp. 119-20, refer­ring to letter to The Times of 5

July 1916. 37 Hirst, Harvey, pp. 139-41,146. 3S N. Blewett, The Peers, the Parties

and the People: the General Elec­

tions of 1910 (London, 1972), pp. 373-4, quoting Hirsts letter to Gilbert Murray 21 January 1910,

and p. 501; Gooch, Friends, p. 74-75·

39 He considered the record of the Labour Party (especially Philip Snowden) on free trade to be more creditable than Lloyd George's, see Hirst, Safeguarding

and Protection (London, 1926), p. 27.

40 There is a paean to Campbell-Bannerman in Hirsts Golden

Days.

41 Hirst, The Formation, History and

Aims of the Liberal FreeTrade Com­

mittee 1931-1946 (A Brief Auto­

biographical History) (published privately, Dunford House, 1947).

97— 100 for detailedlūššēSmēnū Hirst, Principles, p. 147 and Hirst, Money, p. 159.

50 Hirst, Principles, p. 87.

51 Gooch, Friends, p. 22-2 3.

52 Hirst, Liberty, p. 292.

53 Hirst, Money, p. 220.

54 Hirst, Money, p. 242.

55 D.Abel, Ernest Benn: Counsel for Liberty (London, i960)

56 For the classic Thatcherit«? inter­pretation see D. Willetts, Modern

Conservatism (Penguin, 1992). 57 R. Cockett, Thinking the Unthink­

able (London ,1994), p. 9-10.

58 W. Lippmann, The Good Soci­

ety (Boston, 1937), p. viii. Lipp-mann's book also influenced the Ownership for AH programme adopted by the Liberal Party in 1938.

59 For example W. H. Hütt, who Hirst had helped to write The Philosophy of Individualism in 1927.

60 Hirst was on the executive of the FTU until the late 1940s, over­lapping with Arthur Seldon, for example.

61 Letter trom Hirst to R. F. Hår­rod, 6 November 1946, refers to

Gooch, Friends, chapters by J. E. Allen (Hirst's brother-in-law) and Arthur Ransome (an angling partner), pp. 13,48-57.

Hirst, Golden Days, p. 248.

S. Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain, vol. 2

(London, 1984), pp. 211 — 12. S. Koss, Asquith (London, 1976), pp. ! 49-50-S. Koss, Rise and Fall, p. 2 í 1.

Unfinished Peace, Report of the

International Commission on the

Balkans, 1996. Carnegie Endow­ment for International Peace, Washington. See also www.mac-edoniainfo.com/macedonia/ foreword.htm. Hirst, Harvey, pp. 71,75. C. Hazlehurst, Politicians at War

(London, I97i),p. 125 citing let­ter from Hirst to C. PTrevelyan, 12 August i9i4,Trevelyan MSS.. C. Hazlehurst Politicians at War, p. 270.

Hirst, Harvey, pp. 109, 114-15. See also Dudley Edwards, Pursuit

of Reason, pp. 561-67.

F.W. Hirst, Money: Gold, Silver

and Paper (London, 1933),p. f67.

Notably The Political Economy of

War (London, 1915).

Hirst, Golden Days, p. 202.

Gooch, Friends, p. 17.

I am grateful to Professor Philip Williamson for providing me with a copy of this document.

42 F.W. Hirst, Principles of Prosperity

(London 1944), pp. 108-9. It had produced pamphlets in the late [930s against high taxation and armaments. Leslie Hore-Belisha and Oswald Mosley were succes­sively secretaries of the League after Í9i8,see Hamilton,Remem­

bering, p. 85.

43 Hirst, Liberty, p. 295.

44 Letter to Campbell-Bannerman, í 9 December 1905, Campbell-Bannerman Papers, Add Mss 41238, quoted in H.V. Emy, Lib­erals, Radicals and Social Politics

¡892—1914 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 199.

45 Letter to J. C. Wedgwood, 23

January 1924,Wedgwood Papers, quoted in R. Douglas, Land, Peo­

ple and Politics: A History of the Land Question in the UK 1878-

1952 (London, 1976),p. 185.

46 D. Marquand, Ramsay MacDon­

ald (London, 1977), pp. 299-301.

There is no mention of Hirst in Parmoor's account of his appointment, see A Retrospect,

The Autobiography of Lord Partnoor

(London, 1936). 47 Gooch, Friends, chapter by Hirst s

secretary 1929-31, p. 46.

the 'so-called Liberal Party' and adds 'Tories are all for conscrip­tion and preferential protection. They are no more conserva­tive than the Liberal Parties are Liberal'. See: http://e-server. e. u-tokyo.ac.jp/Exhibition/key-nes/gif/167-02.gif

62 Hirst, Money, pp. 238, 247η;

Hirst, Principles, p. 80-S2. Gooch, Friends, p. 37.

63 Gooch, Friends, p. 17. 64 R. F. Harrod, The Proj:A Personal

Memoir of Lord Chenvell (London, í 959), p. 243.

65 For example, he was elected 2 ist of 30 members at the 1943

Assembly, it appears that he did not seek re-election in 1945· LPO reports 1937-47-

66 Hirst, Liberal Free Trade Commit­

tee, pp. 31-32. 67 Hirst, Money, p. x. 68 Ibid. 69 Hoover and Hirst became friends

before 1914 when Hoover worked as an international engi­neer and visited London where he was briefly a neighbour in Campden Hill. He looked after Hirst when he was taken seri­ously ill during a visit to the US in 1929. Hoover contributed to Gooch, Friends (see p. 45).